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The European Journal of Health Economics
Published in: The European Journal of Health Economics 3/2005

01-09-2005 | Original Papers

Measuring health-related utility:

Why the disparity between EQ-5D and SF-6D?

Authors: Stirling Bryan, Louise Longworth

Published in: The European Journal of Health Economics | Issue 3/2005

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Abstract

There remains considerable disagreement concerning the preferred generic utility-based measure of health-related quality of life for use in constructing quality-adjusted life years. The recent appearance (in a published form) of a new measure, the SF-6D, has highlighted this issue. The SF-6D and EQ-5D have many similarities, but marked variation has been shown in the results generated by the two instruments. The study reported here is an exploration of why such divergent results exist. There are two possible explanations: variation in the descriptive component of the instruments and variation in the values applied to health states. The results suggest two important conclusions. First, the SF-6D can describe severe health states, including states that (according to the EQ-5D scoring algorithm) are viewed as worse than the state of being ‘dead’. Second, much of the large discrepancy between the results generated using the two instruments appears to stem from very different valuations being placed on similar health states.
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Metadata
Title
Measuring health-related utility:
Why the disparity between EQ-5D and SF-6D?
Authors
Stirling Bryan
Louise Longworth
Publication date
01-09-2005
Publisher
Springer-Verlag
Published in
The European Journal of Health Economics / Issue 3/2005
Print ISSN: 1618-7598
Electronic ISSN: 1618-7601
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-005-0299-9

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